REPORTER'S NOTEBOOK

Singhberpur

     Thoma Gokhale, the dredger captain in Kanpur, warned me irrigation for agriculture takes off ever more water down to Allahabad. ‘I wouldn’t go down to Allahabad by boat. You’ll spend all your time walking with Basanti on the river bank.’

     So we follow his advice and travel from Kanpur to Varanasi by car, camping along the way. Our journey is leisurely, stopping at various tirthas, big and small, all chosen according to a master plan known only to Bijoy Tivari.

     The first night we camp at the Hanuman Mandir run by a tall bearded swami called Siya Ram Das on the south bank of the river at Palhana. Ram Das offers us fresh vegetables from his garden and milk from the cow whose byre we share. It’s a wonderful spot, high on a bluff. But Ganga has already migrated several kilometres away, so Tivari suggests we drive through Allahabad and head out to Singhberpur near Lalgopalganj on the northern bank of Ganga, about thirty kilometres upstream of Allahabad. It doesn’t figure on our road map. But it turns out to be an inspired choice.

     The village is on the banks of Ganga and appears timeless and far removed from modern India. We pitch our tents in the grounds of the local Sanskrit school, whose great and proud claim is that Murli Manohar Joshi studied here. Mr Joshi was Education Minister in the BJP government and hell-bent on ‘saffronizing’ the national curriculum. Not surprisingly, the school is a true-blue Hindi culture school. But it has a water pump and plenty of wood for cooking. And just outside its walls are rather nice ghats.

     We soon discover the real reason why Tivari has brought us here. Singhberpur is a tirtha. A tirtha is indeed more than just a pilgrimage spot. It is a place where a human can cross into the world of the gods, and a god into the world of the humans. Ganga is dotted with such tirthas - some famous like Haridwar or the Sangam at Allahabad, others small like Jahngira Island, Bithur or Singhberpur - known only to devout Hindus.

      Singhberpur has an additional claim to fame because of its connection to the Ramayana. This is where Ram, Sita and Laxman, after being forced into an exile that would last fourteen years, crossed Ganga on their way south. A rishi who meditated right here, gave them food and shelter.

      The ferry on the far bank at Palhana, where we camped the previous night, marks the spot where they crossed, according to Bhagwat Prasad Misra, who is one of the purohits in Singhberpur. It is said Sita talked to Ganga here. Singhberpur is also a favoured place for women to come and pray for sons, interestingly not to Ganga or Sita but to the rishi’s wife Shanti Devi.

     Bhagwat Misra tells me that at this January’s Marg Mela the river turned red from the pollution of the tanneries in Kanpur, two hundred kilometres upstream. Misra laments, ‘There’s nothing we can do about it. So we only use Ganga jal for religious purposes. We bathe here but we use tubewell water for drinking.’ But red doesn’t make much sense. Chromium is blue. I probe further. Misra then admits the water was probably stained red because of all the sheep slaughtered for Eid-al-Fitr by the predominantly Muslim community, who just happen to live in Jajmao, near the tanneries.

      Tivari has been in a state of high excitement since we arrived. To please him I strip down and take my first-ever dip with him in the river. I’ve never really before thought about swimming in Ganga. The water is warm, quite clean to the eye and skin, altogether refreshing. Mine surely isn’t a true ‘holy dip’ because I’m not a Hindu and don’t know the rituals, but it sends Tivari into paroxysms of happiness. ‘Chief has bathed in this holy tirtha with me! To take a dip here can only add to his virtue.’ If I’d only known it was this simple to make him so happy I’d have bathed in Ganga a lot sooner!

     I really should have twigged a lot sooner why we had abandoned Palhana for Singhberpur. Tivari’s always been a huge believer in the Ramayana. He knows the entire epic down to the smallest details. He’s overjoyed because Motilal Sukla, the headmaster of the Sanskrit school, has just told him that Radha and Krishna also visited Singhberpur. Mr Sukla assures him that Radha is an avatar of the goddess Ganga.

     The villagers in Singhberpur ask me if I’ve visited the ruins of Gawuk’s Fort. Mehendi Hassan, the official in charge from the Indian Archaeological Survey, isn’t quite sure what to do with us: refuse us entry or go along and hope no one says anything. In the end he opts to show us round.

     Mr Hassan explains that this isn’t a fort at all, but a partial excavation of an ingenious water harvesting and purification system. The tank is two thousand years old. Water from Ganga came in, was purified, stored and then expelled out the other side into containers. The ‘fort’ also had a clever use of jagged tiles to aid the grip of bathers. The villagers, of course, will always believe it is a site from the Ramayana.

     When we get back to the school, Mr Sukla has prepared a surprise. His students are going to recite part of the Ganga Lahiri in Sanskrit. Normally, I’d be very excited, but the recitation is unfortunately off-tune, and about as inspiring as warmed-over rotis. Even Tivari is unimpressed. He goes to dust down the Scorpio. That evening, before aarti on the village ghats, I ask Dr. Sukla out of curiosity if he speaks Sanskrit at home. ‘A little,’ he replies. ‘ But it’s really the language of the gods.’

     The aarti is a more pleasant experience because it is short and devoid of all the hoopla that surrounds aartis at the more obvious pilgrimage spots along Ganga.

           Much of it is slightly out-of-tune and unpolished, interrupted by chants of Ganga Jai and Sita Ram, assorted gongs, and blasts on the conch shell. The performance is impressive not least because of the extraordinary breath control displayed by the pradhan, Bhagawat Prasad Tripathi, who then recites Singhberpur’s connection to Ramayana as told by Tulsidas in the Ramcharitmanas - the Awadhi dialect version of the Ramayana. After ten minutes, mercifully the other pandas hurry him along. They want to finish the ceremony, go off home, and eat.

      At seven next morning, Bhagwat Prasad Misra is circumambulating the temple chanting in praise of Shanti Devi. Far below men bathe and chat, a man hammers a charpoy back together. But our time is up.

     Reluctantly we have to leave Ram, Sita and Shanti Devi for the legendary Sangam at Allahabad, where Ganga and Yamuna (and Saraswati) meet. In Hindu mythology Varanasi, Gaya in Bihar, and Allahabad are the three most holy places to bring the ashes of a departed family member.

     In front of Allahabad University we pick up Manoj, one of Bijoy’s five brothers. The family village near Sultanpur is a hundred kilometres north of Allahabad. I first met Manoj in 2001, in slightly unusual circumstances.

     Bijoy had an Ambassador back then. We’d come from Haridwar en route to Varanasi. Mobile phones were still around the corner, but somehow Bijoy had arranged a time and place with his youngest brother. We came to a halt on the side of the main highway outside the High Court and a young man stepped forward. Bijoy got out, opened the boot of the Ambassador, took out the spare tire and lifted out a twenty five-kilo sack of basmati rice stored underneath. Little brother was being re-supplied by his elder sibling. Transaction completed, off we drove to Varanasi.

 Allahabad

Three years later cell phones make such rendezvous commonplace. Manoj speaks Sanskrit and Awadhi, so Bijoy has picked him up as we drive through Allahabad.

     In guide books to Allahabad Ganga is often described as sweeping down from the north. Sweeping is too grand a word. Limping would be far more appropriate. Ganga staggers round, exhausted, from the north; Yamuna, green and pregnant with vitality, from the south. Ganga is no more than three feet deep, Yamuna twenty. A boatman swore to me that Yamuna is a hundred feet and Ganga thirty feet deep at the Sangam. But I’ve walked in the latter so I know he’s wrong.

      Most visitors, pilgrims or just the plain curious, camp at the Sangam - the sandbars where the two rivers physically meet. Allahabad is called Tirth Raj Prayag, the king of tirthas. I can see why.

     The actual sangam is marked by a line of country boats - little floating villages - moored in a very gentle crescent along part of the ridge where the two rivers meet. Yamuna - the more vigorous - flows into the muddy brown Ganga almost at right angles. For several hundred metres the two keep their formal distance - you can see the strict line of demarcation as they flow side by side. And then natural reserve breaks and they become less and less distinguishable until they are just one. The Sangam as the sun goes down is one of the most beautiful sights in the world.

     Each of the hundred or so country boats displays a pennant to inform those who can’t read where to find the purohit or pilgrimage priest for their district or state. A peasant coming from Madhya Pradesh or Rajasthan would immediately know where the panda with his family records could be found.

     The kumbh camping grounds are huge, criss-crossed with roads. As we enter, youths leap on to the running-board of the Scorpio, offering protection and advice on where to go - in return for the usual bakshish. I’ve been warned about them.

     ‘Manoj, we can’t stay here,’ I tell him. ‘Those guys will strip the Scorpio as soon as we’re asleep. Is there anywhere else?’

     ‘I know somewhere quiet on the Naini road on the other side.’ Manoj replies.

     Half an hour later we drive into the Sri Sachcha ashram complex on the southern side of Yamuna, directly opposite the camping grounds we had so recently fled. In the centre is a sunken garden. Martine and I are of one mind: ‘We’ll camp here!’

     Manoj asks if I’d like to talk with Sachcha Baba Gopalji. ‘Yes, why not?’ I say.

     Sachcha Baba Gopalji is a vigorous seventy year-old sporting a long white beard. He is reclining on his roof terrace under a shade covered with Ganga grass, cell phone in hand.

     ‘The mixing of Yamuna and Ganga here is the meeting of the Krishna and Ram cultures. Ayodhya and Vrindavan - different attributes. One is a place of wisdom, the other of love, devotion. Krishna is love, Ram is knowledge.’

     I’ve always associated Shiva with Ganga; his temples and statues dot the river bank from Gangotri on down. I just don’t associate Krishna with Ganga. Ram yes, because Ayodhya isn’t that far north and this is believed to be the landscape in which much of the early parts of the Ramayana took place. But Gopalji makes it sound so obvious. He continues: ‘Not only different cultures but different colours. Yamuna is green and Ganga is white. While it is called Ganga until the sea, the colour is that of Yamuna.’

     That’s pure poetic licence. Both above and below the Sangam, Ganga remains its usual muddy brown because of the silt it’s carrying. Not a trace of green anywhere all the way to the Bay of Bengal over thirteen hundred kilometres downstream. But in such a beautiful spot I too might give myself over to such flights of fancy. ‘What is the significance of Sangam? Why do people come here to bathe?’ I ask.

     I ask Gopalji if he thinks Ganga will ever die - literally dry up and go back to the heavens. He fulminates: ‘We have become too self-centred. But those who have faith will not permit the government to let Ganga dry up. Ganga is not only a river, it is living humanity, living faith. We will not permit the goddess to die.’

      The next day at ten a.m. Dassirat, the ashram boatman, rows us out across Yamuna to the Sangam. Mixed in with the chanting of mantras are the squawking of squadrons of gulls. Basant, Gopalji’s young PA who accompanies us, buys ten rupees worth of bird seed from a passing boat, and then proceeds to coo ‘aao aao aao.’ I find this very irritating, but later realize it’s the North Indian way of calling ‘come.’ The gulls squawk and squabble with joy at so much food - ‘Oh, to be a sea gull at the Sangam!’

     We moor with everyone else at the line of tethered country boats along the ridge that marks the actual meeting of the two rivers. Men and women wade on the Ganga side. The water barely comes up to their knees. Tivari points at a man dunking himself in the shallow water. ‘He has come for visarjana, the submersion of ashes of departed relatives.’

     These boats belong to the pandas or purohits who intercede in the ritual prayers between the individual and Ganga. Next to us is a boat filled to the gunwales with families from Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.

     The Chhattisgarh family have come to throw the ashes of a dead aunt into this most auspicious of spots while the purohit chants the appropriate mantra. This way, the soul gets to heaven faster. The family from Jharkhand came overnight by the Chambal Express, and will leave again tonight. They have brought the asthi or ashes of their late sister: ‘So that her soul will be at peace. All this is written in the Ramayana and Mahabharata. We follow the rituals accordingly.’

     Their panda Abdesh Misra specializes in families from Orissa, Bihar, Jharkhand and Assam.

‘I get the travellers to do puja and make offerings for Gangaji. Then there are those who bring the ashes, the asthis, for the pinda daan (offerings for the soul). We do all those things for them. Your next life will also be better if you bathe here.’

     I have a more immediate agenda: ‘I’m going to have a bath. Tivari will be very upset if I don’t.’

I undress and take my holy dip with Tivari. Martine merely hitches up her salwar and pronounces the water surprisingly clean. ‘Maybe this belief in miraculous powers has some validity. It really feels fresh,’ she says.

     Tivari keeps repeating: ‘I am very happy, I am very happy, I am very happy, By bathing here my mind is now very calm. All my sins have been washed away.’
He first came to the Marg Kumbh when he was eighteen, then a gap till he was thirty, and since then on and off. ‘Chief, Prayag Raj is the king of all tirthas.’

     Raja wonders if Martine is blessed because she didn’t take a full bath. Tivari replies indignantly: ‘Memsahib? To get clean you only have to see Ganga. Memsahib had darshan of Ganga, she took photo of Ganga, even she went into this water half up to waist line . So it’s ok.’

     A procession carrying a big red flag advances down the far bank, led by a raucous band. Tivari explains: ‘They are taking the flag for a holy dip. Then they go to the Hanuman temple, offer it to him, have it blessed, then return to their village. This is flag dipping ceremony.’

     In the boat next to us, a family from Lalitpur in Jhansi district in UP, south of Kanpur, explain they have come simply because ‘this is a holy river of our country; this is why we came to bathe here.’ Anticipating my question, he continues: ‘We offer a shriphal after the puja. We believe that an offering of shriphal frees you of your sins.’

     The husband and wife have come once before. For their mother it’s the first time. ‘We have managed to stay faithful to the shastras (holy books). We feel good inside because we are going along with Hindu culture.’

     Why are they filling plastic bottles with Ganga jal? The husband says, ‘Scientifically the water of Gangaji is good. It says in the Veda shastras, that if somebody commits a sin then Gangaji’s water absolves you from that sin. We will take it home, keep it in a sacred space. If somebody is dying then we put this Ganga jal in his mouth, so that he becomes pure, attains salvation.’

     His wife adds: ‘It is better than distilled water, it never gets insects. We also use it for puja and rituals. It is needed in our rituals. We mix a few drops with ordinary water.’

     Yes, but what about the pollution?

     They acknowledge that everybody back in Jhansi knows how polluted the river is in Kanpur. The husband blames the Kanpur tanneries; then he expresses happiness with the new sewage treatment plants built under the Ganga Action Plan; finally he offers a third observation full of contradictions:

     ‘This is all because of pollution and population. It is not as though the Indian government is not trying. They are building plants on such a large scale, so that river will not become impure due to the pollution. In any case, how could it ever be polluted? Ganga rises in Gaumukh. But even here it’s still fresh and very sacred. If you take this water and keep it for some time it will never get any insects or germs. So how can you call it polluted?

     The wife jumps in quick as a flash: ‘She is our mother, she can never be impure and our government will not let it become impure. Isn’t it normal for kids to shit in their mother’s lap? Oh, children will be naughty, but a mother is a mother. Mothers always clean their kids. We cannot pollute our mother. This river will never die, no matter how many times they dam it. It is our belief that nobody can finish this river, even this Tehri dam. Ganga is eternal.’

     How I would have loved Bimal, our boatman back in Chiyaser, to have heard their answer.

     At the ashram’s splendid evening aarti there’s an old blind man sitting with the swamis. Even Sachcha Baba defers to him. Who is he? He’s a retired judge from the Allahabad High Court called Swami Chandra Bahl Misra. The next morning word comes that he wants to meet us.

     He unties, at a stroke, the major conundrum that has long been troubling me: how can millions of Hindus believe this same polluted river is a goddess who purifies human souls and leads them to the next world?

Varanasi

     For Chandra Bahl the answer is simple: ‘Ganga has a dual identity. If you consider her as a river then she can be polluted and die. But if you consider her as goddess then she can never die. Pollution is in the eye of the beholder. If you believe, you cannot get sick and there is no pollution. There are no mass epidemics and Indians are not fools, so how does the West explain this? The West should ponder this.’

     For millions of Hindus, Ganga can therefore never be dirty in the Western sense of pollution. For them physical pollution and spiritual pollution are two entirely different creatures. Only the most intellectually sophisticated attempt to make a possible connection; to argue that severe physical pollution might affect the spiritual purity of the goddess.

     In Kanpur rituals have been modified. But ‘modify’ does not mean undermining the sanctity of the river as goddess. A mother might fall on hard times but she will still be a mother, you don’t disown her. A woman can still be a queen even if she is in rags and physically filthy. She retains her underlying grace. Similarly with a river.

     As the judge says: ‘The river is simply the goddess in liquid form. No matter how much the physical river is abused she still retains her sanctity. All the evidence suggests she will always be revered. This is the feeling these people have for Ganga.’

     We reluctantly leave for Sitamahri, midway between Allahabad and Varanasi - another tirtha known primarily to Tivari. The next morning, out on the bluffs overlooking the river, I notice the river being used for commerce for the first time. Boats bring down sand from upstream, unload it into wicker baskets that camels then gracefully carry up the bank to waiting lorries to be driven away to area building sites.

     Indu arrives in Varanasi tomorrow. Varanasi, also known as Banaras, Benares, or Kashi, is situated on the left bank of Ganga, where the river flows north. In Hindu culture this signifies a daughter returning to her father’s house, a most auspicious event. This is probably why it is the holiest of all stops along Ganga, more so than the Sangam or any of the other major tirthas.

     Varanasi is loaded down with myths, not the least of which is the common conception of how old it really is. It is often called the world’s oldest continuously inhabited city. While it is technically true that people have lived on or near this spot for many thousands of years, it still strikes me as intellectually lazy because it is taken too much on unquestioned trust. No matter what its age, there is no doubt this is India’s holiest city, because it is believed to be the city of Shiva on earth, and because it flows north.

      Why do people come to die at Varanasi? What’s so special about death here at Varanasi?

     Death in Varanasi is moksha, liberation. If one dies here, Lord Shiva himself will whisper the Tarika mantra, the boat mantra, the mantra that will take you across the ford to the far shore. That is Shiva’s promise, that everyone who dies in Varanasi will be liberated from the endless round of birth and death that makes up the cycle of life. Sounds a good reason to me.

     So people come from all over India to die here because from one can bypass the hell of endless reincarnation. Devaprayag, Haridwar, Allahabad, Gays, Ujjain, Nasik, Ganga Sagar and others are all very important in purifying the human soul of sin and conveying one’s remains to the next world. But at Varanasi-Banaras-Kashi you can cut out all the waiting and go direct.

     A trip one early morning on a country boat with Anil and Rinku, our boatmen, shows why Varanasi makes such a huge impression. For at least the last three hundred years visitors have found scenes of mourning, bathing along the river Ganga visually and emotionally arresting. It’s the sheer size of the ghats at Varanasi - a gentle arc of three miles on tall bluffs.

     Can a Western visitor ever really understand this mixture of the sacred and profane, of life and death that is the essence of life in this very public, and very Indian arena called Varanasi? And everywhere human life in noisy motion. People are performing their religious ablutions, others are simply scrubbing down with soap and shampoo.

     Long flights of stone ghats lead down to the river, crammed with thousands upon thousands of Hindus going about their morning prayers waist deep in the river. Hands cupped, eyes closed, they pray to Ganga, Surya, to Shiva, Vishnu and many more besides, letting the water of Ganga dribble through the palms of their hands. The bather then turns seven times clockwise and dunks him or herself thrice in the river. The ritual completed, they dry themselves, get dressed and chat with their neighbours before mounting back up the ghats and to home, breakfast and the day ahead. Most Westerners simply have never seen anything like this: massive morning prayer along the river Ganga.

     Everything about Hinduism is a head-on challenge to Western notions of religion and God. How many times have Westerners (and Muslims) poked fun at the notion of thirty or three hundred million gods? Fixation on a precise number misses the point. Hindus are expressing the idea that God is infinite, that whatever they mean by God cannot be captured by any one idea, name or form. Thirty or three hundred or three million is merely another way of saying you can’t count the ways in which God can be present. For Christians, Muslims or Jews, brought up to regard all forms of idolatry as heresy, this public display of bathing, faith and jubilation is therefore profoundly unsettling.

     Same problem at Harishchandra and Manikarnika Ghats, the two cremation grounds, smack bang in the middle of the huge crescent of ghats, in full public view. This is something quite frankly that most people who have grown up in European and American cultures have simply never seen., where death is carefully hidden away in professional crematoriums and mortuaries. Indians, on the other hand, make a very public display of death. They bring their newly dead, wrapped in cloth, strung between bamboo litters carried through the crowded streets to the edge of the water. A cremation pyre is built, the body bathed in Ganga and then for several hours it will burn while relatives and priests chant and perform the prescribed rituals. In Varanasi death is the essence of the public life of the city. That is what makes it powerful. This is also what makes it often incomprehensible to people seeing the city for the first time.

     Anil and Rinku row across the river to the largely deserted south bank, which isn’t sacred. Rama Kanth Katheria is bathing there with his entire family, all ten of them.

     Rama Kanth is voluble. He explains that few people ever cross to bathe on this Maghar bank: ‘It has not been blessed by the gods. But we come here anyway because it is quiet and clean. Yes, our sins are washed away, but we have so many that are invisible, from previous lives. Today I have taken a sankalp (vow) to give up some vices and bad friends.’

      Next morning, Rana B Singh introduces me to his family purohit or panda, Devendra Nath Tripathi, sitting less than five yards away. Tripathi intones mantras for his customers at his stand here at the head of Asi Ghat. He gives them tulsi leaves, which he has blessed: they hand him coins, fruits and vegetables in return. Tripathi explains: ‘Many women come here to make offerings before bathing. They make a sankalp and set their goals for the day. In return I bless them with a mantra.’

     The first couple have come to seek his blessing for their nitya pooja - the daily bathing ritual. They hand him fresh fruit and a few coins. Tripathi begins the mantra. It starts off listing time and place in descending order - Cosmos, India, Varanasi, Asi Ghat, month, day, name of the family - then purpose (take a daily bath in Ganga). Next, an appeal to Mother Ganga, then one to Vishnu to help one get through the day. The devotees give a symbolic offering of fruit as proof of their good faith and Tripathi in return takes tulsi leaves, while they touch Tripathi’s feet. This is the proof that they have performed the initiation rite. Tripathi blesses them: ‘With the blessings of God you may now perform the rite.’

     The whole thing has taken barely three minutes from start to finish. This is the simplest of all daily rituals. When the women have bathed they will return to seek more blessings from Tripathi, because without them the dip is incomplete. Again, they will give offerings to the gods - Rama, Krishna, Vishnu - offer water to Tripathi’s basil plant and then make another sankalp for the day ahead.

      Down at the river bank, a wedding party is preparing to clamber into a boat. The newly-married couple have come to ask for Ganga’s blessings, so they are offering a garland to Ganga. The party will do a little pooja on the far bank and then come back. As one of them explains: ‘Ganga is our mother so we ask for her blessing, for their good married life. Before she climbs in the boat, Renuka ties a garland of flowers to the prow of the boat. ‘This is the maala. We’ll leave it over there after the pooja.’

      Next to the boat, women at the water’s edge are offering sarees to Ganga for her blessing. ‘We are offering sarees to Ganga and the saree has come from my brothers’ house. We can do it any time. It’s not any specific day but we all decided to come here today and do the pooja.’

     Why don’t they bury their flower offerings instead of throwing them into the river? ‘No, all that doesn’t work for us. We have this way of doing the ritual and that’s it.’ Another couple of women are bottling Ganga jal to take home for the ceremonial first bricks in the family’s new home. They’ll mix some drops in with the cement.

     In so many ways Ganga is a patron saint who watches over every aspect of daily life. For all these people the idea of the pollution of the river is regrettable but it is only a physical blemish that cannot diminish the overall powers of the goddess. They see no need to make a connection between the physical and the metaphysical.

     Kedar Ghat is full of South Indians washing dishes and bathing.

     Kusima is saying her mantra first to the gods, then to the different worlds - gods, humans, animals - and finally to Ganga. Kusima has come here from Hyderabad with her mother, sister-in-law and brother. This is probably the greatest moment in their lives. And the proximity of the Harishchandra cremation Ghat next door has inspired her: she now wishes to be cremated here.

     Kusima says: ‘’We have seen God, we got a glimpse of the Lord and bathed in Ganga. Ganga is the ultimate event in my life. We attain salvation because we have bathed here in Ganga. No other river will do. Cauvery and Godavari are holy, but Ganga is Divine. Only Ganga comes from Heaven.’

     Others in the Tamil community are also in ecstasy: ‘For three generations no one in my family has had the opportunity. So this visit is very important.’ Literally, the opportunity of a lifetime.

      Anil unloads us at Tulsidas Ghat, a hundred yards upstream of Asi Ghat where we are also staying. Tulsidas Ghat is also the home of Veer Badre Mishra, the mahant or hereditary priest of the Sankat Mochan temple at Tulsidas Ghat. He’s spent the past thirty years trying to alert people to the threats to Ganga here at Varanasi. Until recently, he was professor of hydrology at the nearby Benaras Hindu University. His Sankat Mochan Foundation is internationally synonymous with Ganga. The foundation has highlighted extraordinarily high levels of E.coli in the river: he tells Indians and the world that this makes it totally unsafe for bathing.

     How can VMB spend so much time criticizing the government for its failure to clean up Ganga at Varanasi” And yet bathe in the river every morning, all the while knowing as a scientist it’s polluted? How does he reconcile the two?

     Isn’t there a contradiction? I’d expect the mahant to remind me that a river be both dirty yet clean human souls. His initial answer surprises me.

     ‘As a scientist I don’t find anything which can prove that Ganga has self purifying capacity more than any other water mass.’

     But he then makes the same distinction as the blind judge in Allahabad. The metaphysical and the physical worlds are entirely different. ‘Yes, the river can be poisoned and make people sick. On a purely religious level it is nectar.

     “But can’t poison and nectar mix?’

     ‘No, the two are entirely separate. I am committed to both Gangas. As a scientifically-trained mind I want to protect the river. But my heart has an entirely different relationship to Ganga. The physical world and the world beyond the limits of our senses are two entirely different worlds.’

     So can faith make polluted water clean?

     ‘Let practising Hindus believe. Let them live the way they want to live. For me they are jewels who have preserved this culture for thousands of years. But they are also human beings and it is a proven fact that if one takes polluted water one will become sick and some will die. And if Hindus die then with them, this Indian culture and faith will go. The two are related. Can we not just see this and use all the resources of faith, science, technology and politics to protect this body of fresh water?’